Until someone mentioned to me that less than 10% of all Americans have ever served in the military, and I looked it up, I'd always thought the number was a much larger. In fact, since 1776, only about 48 million Americans have served in the military during war and peace. And, only 2% to 3% of the US population has seen combat in the military. In fact, only 16.1 million Americans out of 138 million served during World War II, a war that saw 1.9 billion people serve in various militaries.

Actually, we do have functioning draft boards. The federal government maintains fully trained draft boards and appeal boards all across the country. If the war mongers ever need more troops than they can get to join, the draft can be reinstated in a very brief time. If the draft is reinstated, I am certain it will be a gender equal program, so you might have to trade your training bra for an AK-47. Unless you are in my jurisdiction and ask for a deferment, of course.

Spoken like someone who has never been a dependent and doesn't know anything about what it's like.

When your parent/spouse is in the military, the military controls your life whether you want it to or not. You move where the service says. Depending on the post in question, you'll live on base, give birth/be born at a DOD hospital, go to a DOD school, shop at DOD Exchange/Commissary stores, worship at a DOD chapel, exercise at an MWR gym and spend your vacation, when you're lucky, at an AFRC. Everyone you know will be a servicemember or dependent; anyone who isn't will be gone from your life in three years when you relocate.

So no, this poll doesn't cover all the bases. There are hundreds of thousands of people on those bases right now whose relationship to the military is not adequately described in this poll, not by a long shot.

The pilot did not eject from his craft.He flow in a no fly zone at a low altitude (it was anyway forbidden to fly that low) 20 dead, the craft landed with minimal damage on a nearby airport.Both pilots got accused by an usa military court and found: not guilty.Even in the heart of europe in NATO allied countries the USA behaves like a supreme emporer...

Believe me, Americans are not happy with the way NATO is going either. From a US point of view, Europeans are leaving most of the expense and dirty work to the US and then complain about how the US does the job.

Gates put it pretty bluntly:

Even so, Gates' assessment Friday that NATO is falling down on its obligations and foisting too much of the hard work on the U.S. was unusually harsh and unvarnished. He said both of NATO's main military operations now — Afghanistan and Libya — point up weaknesses and failures within the alliance.

"The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress — and in the American body politic writ large — to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense," he said.

They were flying too low and based on maps that did not mention the new aerial tramway. They were court martialed in the U.S.A., acquitted, then trialed a second time and were sentenced to a short prison time.

Similarly in Iraq, numerous incidents of rape and murder went unpunished by US soldiers - I can't comprehend why you'd ever allow that. That makes the US soldiers akin to the Japenese soldiers that raped Nanking in my eyes, if you want to play the good guy you don't just go into a country and arbitrarily rape and murder people with little or no punishment.

I would appreciate even one link to a rape that happened that was not punished. I am not going to touch on the murder thing since that is always debatable in a war zone; although I assume you are talking about Haditha... links please.

To the parent, IIRC, it was a pair of EA6B electronic warfare jets that were flying "map of the land" which means extremely low. Their charts did not show the ski lift line but it was NOT a no fly zone. The tail of one of the planes managed to cut the cable supporting the ski lift. Neither plane was damaged.

The pilots of both planes were administratively disciplined (read their careers were over and were unemployable). Americans do not allow their soldiers and airmen to be tried in foreign countries because of politics never allowing a fair trial.

Even in the heart of europe in NATO allied countries the USA behaves like a supreme emporer

The US behaves according to the treaties, and they called for a US trial. There was sufficient reasonable doubt on the manslaughter charges, with the cables missing from maps, flight floor notifications not given or read, and aircraft malfunctions. Mistakes that led to this were went up to the commanders, yet people wanted only crew to be convicted. As is often true with military accidents, the actions of several people, and several intertwined conditions, coincided to create that accident.

Even then the two were railroaded out of the military, with loss of all benefits, because of pressure from the Italians. And in the end the US paid the agreed compensation to the families.

That makes the US soldiers akin to the Japenese soldiers that raped Nanking in my eyes, if you want to play the good guy you don't just go into a country and arbitrarily rape and murder people with little or no punishment

There's a semi-hidden cemetery in France filled with executed US WWII solders who raped and murdered the locals. The military has such disrespect for them that they are only marked with numbers, not names. We don't execute quite so much anymore, but we still do proper military criminal investigations into such allegations.

There are two sides to this. On one, we talk as you do about making sure justice is done for crimes committed, and the damage inherent in not fully investigating. On the other hand, there's the concern about railroading troops who were doing the best they could in a bad situation. A soldier fighting for his life in a firefight shouldn't have to ask to for a time-out so he can consult an attorney to avoid potential Monday-morning legal quarterbacking. This is all the harder with an enemy who doesn't wear a uniform and blends in with the locals.

And, yes, every friendly fire incident gets a full investigation. Criminal charges are unlikely since most of these are truly accidents with multiple contributing factors. However, we once railroaded a colonel out of the Army over a friendly fire incident, using the fact that he'd violated some local command policy by going up that day when they couldn't find an actual violation of law in the friendly fire incident itself. Because of feelings just like yours, there is a LOT of political pressure from the very top to convict for friendly fire incidents, and in those cases we have to be extra sure that justice, not mob justice, is done.